# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1860_S190
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

190 Toward the Grounding of a New Physico-Theology.

their natural kinships, their internal structure, their embryology, and their fossil remains. At the same time the author wishes to show what other countries — especially Scandinavia, Germany, and France — have accomplished in scientific zoology, particularly in the developmental history of animals; he apologizes at the same time to his European readers for various digressions and elaborations in the text, since it was written in America and largely for America, and he therefore could not write for scholars as a special class of people (although the work in many sections is kept quite strictly scientific). "On the contrary" — he says — "so general is the desire here for knowledge that I may expect to see my book read by fishermen, by farmers, by simple laborers to the same extent as by students of our colleges, and I therefore had to try to make myself understood by everyone." He states, further, that he had at the same time to make up for the want of many other works of natural history such as the Old World has possessed for instruction for many years. As to the uncertainty of human life, he wished to give a sample, only in the first three parts, of how the whole work would be treated.

The author uses the last pages of the preface for a special and specific acknowledgment to all those men and institutions who have given material support, above all, for the first two volumes already finished and now before us. Instead of many examples, only this one may be cited: a Mr. Winthrop Sargent of Natchez collected turtles on the most extensive excursions through the southern and western parts of the Union, and then made a journey of more than a thousand English miles in order to bring the living specimens himself to Agassiz in Boston.

Since those communications of Agassiz's we have had still further reports on the reception of the work; thus a later communication from the Smithsonian Institution already speaks of 3,000 subscribers. Since a copy of the work, which is calculated at ten quarto volumes, is to cost 120 dollars, Agassiz has at his disposal 360,000 dollars for its publication. The subscription must have grown further since then. In the subscribers' list, Massachusetts alone accounts for 618 copies, California 48, England 59, and the rest of Europe only 8, of which 4 are for Germany. The list extends even as far as the Philippines. This, however, is a testimony to what is possible in America in this respect. A young American continuing his studies in Germany told us recently that he had joined together with 9 other students of his college in order to subscribe to a single copy. A similar work undertaken in Germany would, by means of subscription from all the possible potentates, certainly not find much more than 100 takers.

However dubious one may regard, in many respects, the ecclesiastically fragmented conditions of North America, what we have set down here